Opinion

On July 12, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague handed down its long-awaited ruling on a case brought by the Philippines against China regarding the South China Sea. Judging by the international reactions to the ruling so far, the consensus (outside China at least) has been that this is “a huge win“ for the Philippines and a ...

  France is in the line of fire. Of the 16 terrorist incidents that took place in Western nations this year, five were in France, including the deadliest one — Thursday’s apparent lone wolf attack in Nice, which killed at least 84 people. A little more than a week before the attack, a commission set up by the French parliament ...

Russia’s lease of the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, at $115 million per year, extends until 2050. Although Russia’s new spaceport, the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East, saw its first successful launch in April, the facility is a long way from completion and already behind schedule. Periodic reports that Russia intends to leave Baikonur before 2050–such as news last summer ...

  Noah Smith After a landslide victory in Japan’s election on July 10th, the Liberal Democratic Party now has a supermajority in both the upper and lower houses of the Diet. Essentially, there is no longer any effective political opposition in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has more power than any leader in decades — even more than his famous ...

In an important decision with immense consequences for data storage services and law enforcement, a federal appeals court has quashed a warrant for e-mails that Microsoft was storing on a server in Ireland. Unless Congress changes the relevant law, this ruling creates the incentive for criminals — or anyone else who wants privacy protection from government surveillance — to make ...

  Leonid Bershidsky A clash between European Union bureaucracy and artificial intelligence is a plot worthy of a cyberpunk thriller. It will take place in real life in 2018, once some European data protection laws, passed earlier this year, go into effect. And, though we might instinctively be tempted to endorse progress over regulation, the EU is on the side ...

  Virginia Postrel At 56, I’m way too old to be playing Pokemon Go. After all, the smartphone game’s phenomenal success is built on millennial nostalgia, and I don’t even have any kids to blame. But what started out as research has turned into a mild addiction. It’s fun to wander the streets finding magic critters and the tools to ...

WASHINGTON Few technological breakthroughs have had the social and economic impact of the automobile. It changed America’s geography, spawning suburbs, shopping malls and sprawl as far as the eye could see. It redefined how we work and play, from the daily commute to the weekend trek to the beach. It expanded the heavy industry — steel-making, car production — that ...

  South Sudan rival leaders have their own doubts that the August 2015 deal midwifed by Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional body, and troika, led by US and the UK, would work. They cited some weaknesses in the accord that the frustrated mediators who were in a hurry to clinch the deal, overlooked. Among those doubts though not ...

  Justin Fox Twenty-nine years ago, historian Paul Kennedy coined the term “imperial overstretch” to describe what happens to great powers when their global commitments become too expensive to sustain. He also suggested that the US, which at the time was in the midst of a defense-spending boom under Ronald Reagan, might be overstretching things a bit. A lot of ...